The Village Girl

Chapter Seventeen - [Seetha]

That was what bothered me.

I understood that he could be upset with me... but not my children, who had done nothing wrong. And Maya... he had claimed so many times to have wanted a daughter, and now he had the next best things. A granddaughter. Yet he never came to see her once.

So yes, though I told Aaryan multiple times that he should move past his anger and work with his father, I couldn't help but be a hypocrite and be angry with him myself.

One can imagine, then, how surprised I was, that as Maya approached seven months, a guard came to me and told me the Maharajah wanted to see me.

I was on my daily walk with my maid friends and my children. Aathavan, who was turning two soon, was holding tightly onto my hand while I held his little sister in my other. The guard approached me with a smile, as they often did these days, and bowed low. "My Princess," the older man said. "The Maharajah requests for your presence in his office?"

I hesitated. "Is something wrong?"

"No, my Princess," the guard said. "The Maharajah simply wishes to talk to you. Of what matters, I am unsure of."

I smiled at the man. "Thank you," I said. "I'll come now."

I said goodbye to my maids and then followed the guard down the halls. Aathavan, who had grown quite fond of the warriors thanks to Aaryan's decision to take Aathu with him to training, let go of my hand and chased after the guard, strutting behind the man, who slowed down for him.

I smiled at the sight, happy to see the warriors act so kindly with Aathu. Aathu was no longer a babbler. He was talking now, asking plenty of questions about everything. I noticed that most warriors liked to entertain his questions, playing along and answering his every 'why?'

It blew my mind to see how kind warriors were. We had always seen them as brutes... sometimes brainless brutes. Though, I don't think we were necessarily wrong, especially when it came to the ones back at the Western Fort.

Aaryan told me that the Aathikaran warriors were trained differently. He said that under him and Lakshmanan, warrior training was, in a sense, an art form. An artform that incorporated physical contact. Aaryan said that every day, they would have a session of wrestling. It was competitive and challenging and involved men bringing each other to the brink of death... at least until someone had had enough and surrendered, or the general in charge would end it and declare a winner themselves.

When Aaryan explained this to me, I could not understand how he was going to mold this to explain why the Warriors of Aathikara were so kind. How could wrestling, and bringing your peers to the edge of death, lead to kindness? But when he continued, I was shocked.

Lakshmanan, in his youth, had travelled the region with his father and discovered an Eastern way of training that developed stronger, wiser and more compassionate men, and when he received a position that meant something, he incorporated that into the training regiment of our men.

Physical contact.

That's all it took.

Every day, men would wrestle each other, forced into extremely close proximity with one another. There would be skin to skin contact. You could feel your opponents warmth. You could feel their heart beating. You could feel their life.

And this simple, daily practice, changed the men of Aathikara.

Aaryan said that men, especially those who are trained to be warriors from such a young age, are deprived of physical contact. They are meant to be strong, cold, stone like, and cruel. They became cold hearted killers and those were the men who, for years, were deemed to be the best warriors.